


Thaw

by orphan_account



Series: A Victorian Soulmate AU [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Soul-mating and bonding but it's Victorian, Pining and Aching, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The Terror Bingo 2019, The author loves all of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:02:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22305358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Courteous, charming Fitzjames, whittled down to maturity by the North, and being there, very obviously, not as Francis's right-hand man or as his comrade, but as his mate; a soulmate. Sophia had no need to look at Francis’s face, at the discoloration that would have turned one of his blue eyes into the good-coffee brown of Fitzjames's, to know it, so blatant and luminous a thing it was.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, Past Captain Francis Crozier/Sophia Cracroft
Series: A Victorian Soulmate AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649671
Comments: 11
Kudos: 104





	Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Terro Bingo prompt "Hope". A note: the soul-mating thing about one eye turning the color of your partner's is inspired by the beautiful Psych fic "Twister of Fate" by moondragon25.

When Sophia walked into Admiralty’s croissant of a ballroom, she was surprised at feeling her aunt's hard hand dig into her gloved arm. The grip was just shy of painful. She looked up to follow Lady Jane's gaze, and found herself hold on the door jamb of the Admiralty’s ballroom just not to keel over. Which was unusual, as Sophia had not cried since the day Uncle John sat her on his generous lap to tell her her parents were out of the sorrows of this Earth, and had only ever felt queasy out of nasty seasonal bugs. 

But here she was: teetering, bleeding out color. Swaying on her feet, like impressionable ladies, like exhausted sailors. 

The reason why was threefold, and complex if well-ordered, as most of the things happening inside Sophia were. It was that Francis was there, and that apparently her foolish heart was still trapped somewhere inside him, from the way it trembled as soon as she caught a glimpse of his fair hair in the lavishness of the ballroom lights: thinning further, but unmistakable. The second reason was that he wasn't alone. At the center of the ring of officers come to shake his hand and take a good hard look at the Ulsterman who seized command of a condemned expedition ( _almost like a real Englishman,_ she could hear their shocked, buttered voices murmur among themselves, _can you believe it?_ ) there was someone offering silent support at his side, and that someone was James Fitzjames. Courteous, charming Fitzjames, whittled down to maturity by the North, and being there, very obviously, not as Francis's right-hand man or as his comrade, but as his mate; a soulmate. Sophia had no need to look at Francis’s face, at the discoloration that would have turned one of his blue eyes into the good-coffee brown of Fitzjames's, to know it, so blatant and luminous a thing it was. 

And the third reason, the third thing that speared her through the flesh like a hook and briefly pushed the world out of focus, was the simple fact that Francis ( _her_ Francis) was there at all, and that he was alive. 

Up until then, throughout all the months since he and his companions returned, she had not quite believed in his realness: in the fact of him being a creature alive, moving in the world and breathing and thinking like she did. She hadn’t been able to think of him as not frozen forever in the matter of her memory, like those lovely flower petal you can cast into resin to weight down your correspondence. 

For years, she had tried her hardest not to imagine him the way he was most plausible to be: which was frozen dead, blue with cold – with phalanges showing through the skin of his hands, those rough, clever hands she had sought out often in the discretion of her petticoats, lips pulled back on his bad teeth like the mummies they were digging up out of the sands of Egypt. 

(Some would say Sophia Cracroft suffered from an overheated imagination, which is of course a deplorable thing for a young unmarried lady, if not for a young unmarried gentleman; she does not. She's just an avid reader of scientific magazines, and a diligent scholar with a good memory for details, and so she knows perfectly how bodies die in the desert and in the frozen lands above the Arctic – how exactly a system would come undone under the pressure of sickness. There was nothing fanciful about the way she imagined him rotting away. Nothing impossible at all, and that was what scared her the most – what made her shoot up in her bed late at night and bite down on her knuckles not to scream, not to cry, not to think uncharitable things unworthy of a dutiful niece. 

_God, let Uncle be dead – but not him, not him. Anyone, the whole ship of them, but not him._ ) 

But if Sophia had carefully kept herself from imagining him as a corpse – excising the dreams of peeling skin and grinning skulls from her mind with the care she uses for satin stitches; another handy skill for a lady to learn – it didn't mean she had been able to imagine him as a living man: not after the fourth year was on the cusp of happening, not after the eminent men at the Admiralty, with their warm fur-rimmed uniforms and well-fed faces, had started avoiding Auntie's gaze when she asked when they were sending out another rescue mission. Not after even James Ross had begun to clear his throat whenever he was talking to her – like a man not allowed to mourn a friend, not yet, but bracing for it. 

Francis had lived on in her mind (forever, she had vowed to herself: fossilizing at the center of her, keeping a part of her away from her future husband and her future children if necessary, but _there_ ), but had done so like the engraving on a plate, a sculptor's hand good enough to catch the strange gravity of his uneven face; like a burst of memory at the sight of the heather bushes around their holiday mansion, or a ghost of a touch against her back whenever she smelled sea salt and plain soap, drawing out a shiver, a resetting of her bones. He had lived as the lost ones were supposed to live in the heads of those who stay. 

But here he was, and very much living on his own; and a whole lot less lost than when she had last seen him. Alive enough to have a pulse, making the skin under his collar blush pink at the rustle of Fitzjames's fingers down his back: neither of them realizing everyone can see, or perhaps neither caring much about it; alive enough to curl his hand around his companion’s when it reaches for him, one folded inside the other. 

Sophia stared hard at those hands, sheathed in the white lambskin gloves of their dress uniforms, not skeleton hands at all. She forced herself through the vertigo of it: through the images superimposed over it, of her hand and his. Of worlds where it was still her fingers folded around his, many other worlds, none of which were not this one. 

  


  


  


Sophia had already heard about the soul-mating before coming to the gala. There are indeed delights, and advantages, in spending one’s afternoons with the best-bred gossips of London society. Now she was grateful of the forewarning, because she wasn’t sure she would have been able to bear it otherwise. 

Not that it was anything horrible to look at – not at all. But it was obvious: self-evident. It was in the humming wrapped around them like fine golden mesh, the way their bodies and gestures and even their voices – Fitzjames's glossy lisp, the hard vowels of Francis’s speech – were attuned to the same pitch, slightly different from that of anything else and anyone else in the world. Harmony, in a more musical sense than people seem to believe. The secret sound of soul-mating. No poet or scientist had yet been able to put it in words. Sophia wasn’t sure that was a bad thing. 

She watched as Captain Fitzjames tapped at his glass and said something; Francis throwing back his head a little to laugh, face open as a ripe peach. She had no doubt that, were she allowed to check for herself, she would find their pulses beating in perfect synchrony. 

More guests were jockeying to shake their hands. Pink-cheeked, hungry-eyed: nothing piquing Londoners' interest quite as much as tales of danger and ultimate patriotic triumph and a sprinkle of scandal. Sophia stayed back; made herself stay back, digging her heels into the cracks between the beeswaxed floor boards. She made herself not fall for his pull, not now. She made herself observe them, drinking him in, telling herself if was still more than she could have ever dared ask for. 

Francis was enduring the onslaught of busybodies graciously, at least by his standards: looking only mildly dumbfounded – still a startled animal struggling out of a trap, but less likely to snap at the hand trying to set it free. It was because of Fitzjames, of course. Francis had been many things standing beside her: many of them lovely, a few as painful as a slap. Never at ease in his own skin. 

It wasn't just the resonance of soulmates, that. It was a matter of camaraderie – an easiness in inhabiting the same space in the world. 

Sophia found herself teetering towards them. She felt the same tilting of the sea, of dreams. The blood was thundering in her head hard enough to wash away the music floating over from the orchestra. She made herself not stop; she made herself take a step, and another, and another. 

They too used to have that, her and Francis, once upon a time: an imperfect version of this. Sophia looked at it the way Salieri must have stared at Mozart's stained fingers on the piano keys, plucking out the celestial from his well-crafted notes. Seeing the art you dreamed of, the one you came to feel at the back of your skull, shiny with possibility and that would never be yours to master. 

(It was expected. It hurt significantly more than she had anticipated.) 

"Sophia. _Sophy._ " 

She realized that Auntie was talking to her – trying to, as the increasing pressure of the fingers on her arm proved. Sophia swelled: ready to fight, to explain in precise detail why it was no breach of etiquette to greet the man who nearly became one’s fiance after he made his way back from death itself. Or at least not a mortal one. 

But Lady Jane, under all her coquettish frills and the black crepe, under all the cracks the lack of Sir John had left in her, was too clever a woman for that. To be banal, if not to be cruel. 

"Sophy,” she asks her instead, “Are you quite sure?" 

Sophia breathed out, slowly: to cool her mind, to cool her blood. She knew what Lady Jane meant. It was a reasonable question, a good question. 

She smiled, because she hadn't a good answer at all. 

"I want to, Auntie," she said. "Please?" 

She could feel the hesitation in the hand on her sleeve. The inside of her aunt must be a-buzz with a thousand more questions, many more good reasonable objections. She knew Sophia, though; more importantly, infinitely importantly in a world where their sex was considered as flimsy and feeble as spring robins, she trusted her. 

Lady Jane gave her elbow another squeeze, and let go; and Sophia loved her fiercely, for both gestures. 

"Of course, dear. Just – take care."

"He isn't the biting type, Auntie.”

"No," Lady Jane said, quiet. "No, he isn't. Not at all. And tell him…" 

She hesitated; the battle flicking across her face, a battle of love and resentment, both corrosive, for the decent man who she used to love so much, and had committed no other sin beside that of being alive when Uncle John was not. 

"... Oh, well," Lady Jane blurted out in the end; letting Sophia go for good. She smiled weakly, hiding her face so her niece wouldn't know who won the war. "You'll know what to say way better than I could ever do, dear Sophy."

Sophia nodded. She wanted to wriggle free and run across the room, like an unruly child reunited with her favorite toy. She wanted her aunt to hug her and never let her go. 

"I think I do, Auntie. Rest easy, please. I’ll be fine.” Another lie. She took off then, pushing past the crinolines and the uniforms flashing brass buttons under the chandeliers; the shifting sea of heads, tight female buns trimmed with curls, the scent of pomade a physical caress in the air. A tug under her breastplate guiding her in the maze, across the floor, across the toast of London society, across the years. 

Suddenly she was in the circle surrounding Francis and the tall, handsome man at his side; she was fully visible. Francis sensed her presence before she had to say a single word. It was how they used to work – the presence of each other charging up the air like coming storms. It took several seconds more than it used to, but then he was turning towards her, for the very first time in years. 

Their eyes met; Francis's hand grabbing a bit tighter at the cordial glass.

The last time they had stood so close to each other, she had refused to be his (to call him hers), and he had promised to sign up for a mission which very nearly killed him just because she wished for him to do so. Now he was back, and he was not alone – would never be alone again – and there was a warm brown eye staring out of his face. Not hers, not hers at all. 

"Soph – Miss Cracroft." 

He wasn't smiling, for which she was grateful; Francis's social smiles too much of a curse to bear when aimed at her. But she spied a haziness coming over him, the warm glow filling his face every time he turned to his Second dimming slightly. She hated it, that her presence may cause any part of him to grow darker. 

Sophia stood straighter so the trembling wouldn't show: the trembling of one who stands in the snow in her bare feet. 

"Hello, Francis." She smiled, for both of them. "It is good to see you. Very good."

He arched his eyebrows. "Is it?" 

"Of course," she said. "And you look – remarkably good, if you do not mind my saying so. For one who has just escaped the vicious hold of Arctic death, at least." 

That got a chuckle out of him. "I suppose it did miracles to my figure, if nothing else."

She relished the sound of him laughing. It reminded her of the early Francis, the shy man who seemed genuinely interested in her thoughts, of their rides through the hills of Van Diemen’s Land. Her friend, before they tried to be anything else. 

"Have you already met Captain Fitzjames?" 

Sophia hadn't seen him moving, but now saw Captain Fitzjames was pressing his arm against Francis's: reminding him gently of his presence without imposing himself. Francis had felt it, felt _him_ , without any apparent effort. 

Sophia tried hard to keep smiling as she let Fitzjames take her hand. 

"I think I have, actually," she said. "We must have met at Sir James Ross' wedding reception, if I remember correctly – and on a couple more of dull but prestigious Navy balls."

Captain Fitzjames's fingers briefly closed around hers, glove against glove.

"You are not, Miss Cracroft," said Fitzjames, "we did meet at Sir James's reception, and at the balls the Admiralty were gracious enough to hold in honor of your uncle's expedition –" 

Francis snorted under his breath. 

Very discreetly, Captain Fitzjames stepped onto his foot without even stopping talking. 

"– so I would have no excuse to forget the pleasure of making your acquaintance, Miss Cracroft."

She very nearly giggled. Stubbornly smothered the urge. "You are quite the charmer, Captain Fitzjames."

"If the company requires and deserves my special talents in the field, then yes, I do declare myself guilty as charged."

He smiled: a polished smile, perfectly molded for society meetings, and yet brighter than those things were supposed to be. She remembered he was considered the most handsome man of the Navy, and could see why – despite the lines bracketing his lips, the loose skin disappearing under the collar of his uniform. Those flaws actually made him more real: they made her aware of the calluses on his fingers where they pressed against her knuckles, the ones her hands would never have and that made him a man of the same stock of Francis. 

Sophia simply shook her head; felt him let go of her hand. There was a moment of silence. It chimed like a bell through Sophia despite the delicate hustle of conversation and clinking glasses around them. There was nothing to say; there was too much to say. She found herself fiddling with the lace trim of her gown, her grip restless, so unlady-like, still better than screaming. 

_You were raised to know nothing beside how to make polite conversation,_ she told herself. Y _ou can't even bring yourself to do that?_

Surprisingly, it was Captain Fitzjames who saved them. Out of the corner of her eye, Sophia saw him straighten. "I think I will go and fetch refreshments for us all, then," he said to Francis. He graciously turned back towards Sophia. "Perhaps you would care for some champagne, Miss Cracroft? Unless you share dear Sir John's convictions, in which case I hope you will forgive me for taking such liberty, and I will provide you with some of the excellent cordial Francis is having –" 

"Which tastes positively like swamp water," Francis offered. 

Sophia shook her head. "No need to subject myself to that. Champagne would do just fine, Captain, and I thank you kindly for the thought."

"Splendid," Captain Fitzjames said. "Then I'm off on my mission. I will leave Francis some time to update you on my many shortcomings from our time in the North. He could probably entertain for a whole afternoon on that particular topic."

He started moving away. Sophia saw something move across Francis's face in response: a trembling of panic, of longing, of all those things twisted together. She also saw Captain Fitzjames brush at Francis’s spine; some silent communication taking place between them as he drifted towards the white-clothed tables of refreshments and the usual flocks of widowed ladies plucking them clean of anything edible. 

He was leaving them alone: he was leaving his soulmate, freshly found, freshly tied to his heart, alone with the woman who had been the object of his devotion for years. (Sophia saw no reason to be demure even in her thoughts.) 

She was curious. She was on the verge of panic, much like Francis. She met Captain Fitzjames’s eyes as he passed her. Warmth coming off him, moving through her like a beam of sunlight. No suspicion. No trace of jealousy, either.

_Ah._

As she watched him float away, Francis's eyes lingering on him like the needle of a compass, Sophia thought she would have liked to find some, after all. 

  


Despite the missing jealousy, despite the pinch in her chest – the feeling of shivering in the snow, all the time – talking with Francis was nice. _Very_ nice. It reminded Sophia of how easy that had always been between them; how she missed his silences and his quiet listening, after so many gentlemen passionately in love with the sound of their voices. 

He did tell her a couple of stories from the Expedition, and from the steamship that brought them back home from Canada: lighthearted tales of Fitzjames's fussy recovery after his sickness, and of Edward Little and Thomas Jopson, of whom Francis talked with the warmth she vaguely remembered from the way her own father talked of her. The terror beyond it, the one that put Fitzjames on his deathbed in the first place, was there, not concealed but not unearthed either. She sensed how painful it all was still to him; she knew him enough to feel sure he still remembers all the names of all the men he lost there, in the white silence of the North where she sent him. 

She could insist. She could make him give up his secrets, his secret pain; she would not. She had already asked too much of Francis Crozier. 

Still, when Captain Fitzjames came back with his drinks – after a suspiciously long time spent fetching them – Sophia realized she wasn't quite ready to part ways; not without knowing if that was a farewell. 

She gathered her courage into a tight ball, a point of heat at the center of her chest; she pushed it forward – to make herself call Francis's name, smile at him. Touching him, especially on the wrist or the arm, would be an unforgivable socia _l faux pas_ , after so short a time after a mating of souls; but there were other ways to attract his attention. 

"I'd – I hope we may meet again, Francis," she said. His eyes slid to her. She felt herself blush under the cameo on her choker. "I hope I may tempt you to join me for tea, one of these days – you both, of course – or for supper, too. I… I would like that very much."

Francis blinked, hard. She was again slapped by how surprised he looked, at the thought of her cherishing him still. 

Fitzjames said nothing; merely waited there, polished and quiet and watchful.

"I would like that, too," Francis said at last, softly. 

That was Sophia’s tipping point. Her ball of courage slipping away between her fingers, until she was just a woman trembling in her taffeta dress, so alone in the middle of a room chock full of people. She sipped a last throatful of champagne; rested her glass on the tray of a passing waiter with shaking hands. She bid goodbye to both Francis and Captain Fitzjames, thickly, warmly, and excused herself, and rushed out of the room. 

She tore down down a corridor less fully lit than the rest of the house, and turned a corner, making her way with one hand pressed to the wallpaper, like a blind man. For the first time in years, Sophia was walking with no idea of where she was going. But the din from the ball was receding at her back; the air drifting into her lungs more easily with every step towards silence. 

This hallway was scattered with old-fashioned oil lamps; washed away in half-darkness. When she closed her eyes, she could still see their silhouettes – the two men with their heads bent together, their matching uniforms. They stayed there like the afterglow one gets from staring directly at a bright a light. 

Sophia bit down on her lip. She was so cold. She wasn't sure how long her legs would hold her. 

There was a door on her left. She pushed it open, found a little parlor in disuse, and slipped inside.

The air smelled gentle and musty, like a room not often aired out; she glimpsed an embroidered sofa on the side, all the light coming through a single window from the streetlights below them. It was so improper, for a young – no, not so young; but unmarried, which was so much more damning – lady to be alone in a room in someone else's house; suggestive of a prying mind, too.

Sophia couldn't bring herself to care. Sophia still thought it better than unraveling in the middle of the reception, pulled open at the seams by Captain Crozier's voice. 

She closed the door behind her. The last ghosts of voices and music died with a soft click. She walked to the window, and made herself suck in several deep breaths, staring at the swirls of frost on the glass panes. She cursed the stays of her corset; she cursed her mind, which couldn't slow down. 

It had been so lovely, to see him, to talk to him; much more than she had dared to expect. It had broken her heart more than anything she had ever been miserable about. 

_Was this how he felt, when she told him no – again and again? Was this how he felt when he walked up the gangway of the_ Terror _, and didn't wave back at her when she called his name from the quay?_

It wouldn't have changed her decision; it wouldn't have changed anything, to know it. But. But –

Sophia couldn't say how long she stayed there, looking out of the little window: enough to feel herself fit back into her body, for the tip of her fingers to go numb against the cold of the windowsill. She only knew suddenly the door was creaking open, and someone made a sound of surprise, and cleared his throat; and that she had sensed a clicking of boots, too, which meant uniform. 

She straightened; felt her heart tumble against her ribs. 

"Miss Cracroft," came a voice, "I'm sorry to intrude. I didn't realize you were there."

Captain Fitzjames. Oh, of course; of course. (She only realized who she had hoped for when she felt sure it was not him.) Sophia turned away from the window.

"Oh, Captain Fitzjames: you startled me," she said, which wasn't exactly true. 

"Many apologies, madam," he said, "I was in need of a moment of peace and quiet, and didn't think of knocking first." He was still standing in the doorway; the oil lamps in the hallway, the reflected glow of the street, all edged him in gold. "If I knew you were here, I would have of course found somewhere else – but I have discovered this little cozy hiding place during one of the innumerable receptions I had the, err, _honor_ to attend here, and I’ve grown fond of it. It’s certainly one of the coziest."

She grinned, albeit quietly, and taking advantage of the shadow – both at his slip and the suspicion it hadn't been a slip at all. 

"I should be the one apologizing," she said, "considering I have usurped a refuge already claimed." 

"It would be my pleasure to share it with someone so pleasant to entertain oneself with," Fitzjames replied. He too was carrying a lamp; at her nod, he rested it on the cupboard lining the wall at his side. He didn't close the door, but left it ajar. She appreciated that. She wondered not for the first time at the delicacy of his solutions, at the elegance with which he moved around the needs of those around him. She remembered how she had judged him when she first met him – the latest example of the young dapper gentleman, engineered by the right schools and right circles for ladies like herself. She regretted how badly she had underestimated him. 

"I feel everyone needs some space and silence to hear their own thoughts, once in a while," he added then. "And I will remove myself at once if you wish me to do so."

"No – please," she heard herself say; surprising him and herself both. "I – I think I have wallowed in my musings for more than enough for one night. I shall leave you to your own, probably more interesting thoughts in a moment."

"No need to rush," he replied. "I may occasionally need some respite from brilliant conversation, but I'm not against spending it in company. I do not cherish solitude much, I'm afraid." Dimples appeared, on each side of his smile. “Though I have found myself growing more tolerant of those of us who do.”

“Oh?” Sophia said. Breathed in, slowly. “The Arctic would teach a great deal about solitude, I imagine – with the ice, the silence. The bergs.” 

She saw the ghost he was summoning between them. She felt her spine stiffen with the dangerous ground he was treading, offered him the chance to pluck himself out of this pickle.

Fitzjames shook his head. Smoothly vaulted over her offer.

“The ice and bergs of a certain Francis Crozier, more likely,” he said. “It does take some widening of the mind, to accommodate two such as us in the same place – even in our current arrangement.”

The floor lurched under her feet: the cold flaring up again. 

_He had said it; he had gone there. He had really gone there._

The nerve of this man – talking so openly of such things. Sophia remembered her own time with Francis, the painful discretion of their touching, the dosed tenderness, parsed out in drops like medicine. She swayed, very discreetly. 

"I suppose it does,” she said.

He said nothing. Then, "I am sorry, ma'am. I swear I had no intention to upset you."

She looked upon his earnest face, his dark eyes: felt sure he was telling the truth. It made her wonder if it was all there was to it, though; if he was as unaware of the direction they were tumbling toward as he wanted her to believe, or if he had steered them this way on purpose. Knowing he could bear it, like he had borne it when leaving her and Francis alone; knowing she could bear it, too. 

(She could; even broken-hearted, even feeling chilled to the bone by all the things she lost, she could endure this conversation. It made her grateful, that respect of his; it made her bite harder on the inside of her cheek.) 

Sophia shook her head. "No – I, I don't think you did, Captain. And I assure you I am not upset. You may speak freely of Captain Crozier. I do not wish for him to become an unsavory topic that shouldn't be arisen in my presence."

Captain Fitzjames beamed: at her courage, at the mention of Francis, she didn't know. 

Sophia sensed he was about to say something. She crushed the windowsill in her grip, until a splinter struck her finger through the glove, under the nail. She jumped up to stop him before he could open his mouth. 

"Please," she said, "don't say you're sorry."

That caught him by surprise; she could tell by the humming sound he made, the sound of aborted words. A beat of silence followed and filled with the faint hive-buzz from the reception. Just a beat, though. 

When it came back, Captain Fitzjames’s voice was kind. 

"I swear, ma'am," he said, "that I had no intention to do so."

Sophia gulped down the whimper at the base of her throat. She pushed with her hand until she felt her own pulse beat through the wood of the sill, through the splinter coming out of it. 

"... But this doesn't mean I'm blind to the pain of others," he added unexpectedly. He took a step forward. "Or that I ignore the place you will always hold in the complicated heart of our common friend. Or the debt of gratitude I owe to you."

She felt as it the air had been sucked out of the room: the edges of things blurring around here. Too much, too suddenly. She couldn't breathe. "Gratitude?" she managed to ask, grasping at the one thing that made most sense in his entire speech. 

(She wasn't ready to face the fact he talked of hearts, and her place in them; not yet.) 

"I doubt anything I have ever done would require gratitude from you, sir."

"On the contrary." Fitzjames stopped his slow advance: a flutter of something tender in his voice, uncertainty in all that sleekness and careful charm. But it was growing dark outside, and the window was a small one, and she couldn't be sure. 

"If you had not been there first," he said at last, "he wouldn't have been there for me to meet. And if you hadn’t loved him first, he wouldn't – wouldn't have been able to let me in. At all. It is a rather cowardly thing to thank you for it, but – I do. I do."

Sophia was breathing again – but shallowly, little sips of air. They still filled her lungs like ice. 

"So you are thanking me for not having wanted him?" she asked. The words were fearfully improper, and would never show up in the conversation of Miss Sophia Cracroft, who knew how to weave her way through any social calls and who would not be hampered by any cumbersome scandal. But Miss Cracroft was not there now. Now she was just Sophia, and Sophia knew only she was so cold, and that this man was making it impossible better and impossibly worse at the same time.”Because that is all I did, captain. Or are you thanking me for how I nearly sent him to his death?" 

Fitzjames paled: as if physically pained by the idea of any harm befalling his mate. Sophia thought he probably was; wanted to apologize. Sophia wanted to gouge out his eyes with her nails and chuck him out of the window, in the street dirty with spring snow, so he would be as cold as her. 

"You didn't send him to his death, Miss Cracroft," he said. Sophia clenched her teeth so hard they rattled in her skull. _God, n_ _ot his pity,_ she screamed inside her head – prayed. _Everything but his pity._

"Only because he managed to bring himself back." It took her a moment to realize the person hissing those things was her. "Only because he brought himself and all of you home, through things so ghastly even the newspapers got their claws only onto abridged versions of them – and oh, don't give me that look, Captain," she added, harsh. "I know the difference between a gruesome truth and the trite shocks of press repertory. I know it must have taken more than all that nonsense about rabid polar bears and outstanding hardships to make Francis Crozier's hands shake quite as bad as they are tonight."

It came out of her in a surge, searing through her chest. She clasped her hand to her mouth to keep it in: to stop the searing and the singeing. In the half-shadow, she couldn't read Fitzjames's face well. She didn't dare lift her eyes enough to study it, either. 

(So now he knew she still looked at Francis closely enough to see if his hands were shaking; so now he knew she would still talk of him that way, and fretting over him as she had no right to. There were layers of petticoats and silks and ribbons between them, the regular armor of respectability of well-bred ladies, but she had never felt more naked.)

"... You are right." Fitzjames said at last. "It wasn't just the usual ghastly horrors, I guess. It was a… more bitter brand of evil: a darker one, too. It left scars, and dreams. God knows it did. Even on those of us who made it, it left smears of darkness; and I don’t even know the full breadth of it. Francis does.” 

Captain Fitzjames paused, and searched for Sophia’s gaze before continuing. “It doesn’t show quite so much, though, does it? The trembling. He told me he felt rather self-conscious about…” He made a fluttery gesture, pointing to his own fingers. She understood perfectly. Discretion in a man not naturally discreet: protectiveness.

Sophia blinked like a woman waking up from a dream. “No, it doesn’t; not to anyone who is busying themselves with staring at his hands,” she said, not unkindly.

“Oh – good; good,” Captain Fitzjames said. She could see him try to smooth the emotion out of his expression, like she would do with a wrinkle in her gown. He was successful, but not completely. She felt herself going tender despite her best intentions. It was a lovely kind of weakness, after all.

"But, yes – as I was saying,” he went on. “Francis did lead us home. I think no one else would have been able to do the same. But if he chose to sign up for the expedition out of love, ma'am, it was his decision; as it was his decision that he would not succumb on the ice, nor let us all succumb, without making good use of every drop of courage and every scrap of fight we still had in us."

Sophia listened carefully. As she did, she realized she could see them. The long trek across a wilderness unlike any other, and the two of them in the front of their bedraggled children – keeping each other up, seeping into each other. It made her think of the shock of Francis’s aliveness earlier that evening: the way it flowed between him and the man standing before her now. She had seen Francis in the orbit of another James, also sun-like, and seen how painfully dull he looked in the glare. James Fitzjames was pure sunlight too, but the kind that that threw him into high relief. Once there, he glowed for himself; that had never been the problem with Francis. 

It took the shape of a revelation.

" You saved him,” she said. It left her tongue tingling.

Captain Fitzjames shook his head. "I certainly did not, miss Cracroft; and for this I thank our Lord, because the prospect of failing at such a mighty endeavor would have brought me halfway to madness. No – no one saved anyone, back there. Or both of us saved the other at the same time." He straightened. "But we are back; he is back. We are."

He said the words twice. She thought he was probably reassuring himself as much as her. The thought, sudden and ugly _: if he had died as I thought, he would forever be mine, or more mine than of anyone else_. 

Sophia recoiled at the meanness, at the ghost of the small woman this pain was making of her. She pushed on her splinter until she was sure none of that was showing through the surface.

She wasn't fast enough, apparently. Captain Fitzjames’s shoulders grew stiff at whatever her face had betrayed. Sophia was the one who had to look away, down at her hands, because she couldn’t bear the expression in his handsome face. Sophia had the sudden urge to scrub it off her skin before it could bleed into her and make her cry. 

(That skittishness around James's generosity, the modesty in front of genuine kindness; Miss Cracroft had that in common with another remarkable person in his life, mused James. He bit back the pulse of compassion and fear at how similar the two of them were, even if they had never realized it.)

"I – I do wish you all the good fortune God may give us mortals," Sophia said, to the folds of her gown and her hands. "I am utterly sincere in this, Captain Fitzjames. I hope you know it."

"I do, ma'am.” He said nothing else. _Thank God, thank God._

"And I hope you are happy, too. Both of you," she said. She felt the heat climb her neck at how blunt she was being with a near-perfect stranger. 

But the fact was, he wasn't that. Was he? There was a ribbon threaded between them – not red like you would expect, but the soft gray of good wool and clear winter mornings – tied under their breastbones, reaching for the same thing beyond that door; the same fair head, which they would recognize through a hundred thunderstorms, in a thousand crowds. How can you call someone a stranger, when you _know_ the tug pulling at their heart? When you know whose touch makes their hand tremble? You can’t.

Captain Fitzjames was fumbling in earnest now. The knowledge of having finally thrown him off balance, of having flapped a cultured, powerful male, brought Sophia none of the usual pleasure. He lifted his hand to his temple. Without even looking, she knew he was brushing at his left eye, the cloudy blue one he wasn't born with.

"I… thank you, Lady Sophia. And I think we are happy," he said at last. "I think we really are."

They heard music. New music, a waltz, was floating in from beyond the cracked-open door. She saw Fitzjames's eyes flick towards it. Could almost hear the _twang_ in their bond – as no doubt the threat of a waltz would make Francis fret enough to call his mate back to his side. 

But Sophia didn't want this to be over. She didn’t want for this conversation, this moment, to be over just yet. She wanted to be part of this, of _them_ , a bit longer, with the same ribbon hung on their three hearts. 

"It mustn’t be easy," she said. She hoped he would know what she meant. A soul-mating bond between two gentlemen or two ladies was not common, but not unheard of either: definitely not scandalous enough to attract attention for long, especially with two people as respectable and dependable as Francis and James Fitzjames. The papers had gone from shrieking about the bond itself to covering the renovation works at the house the newly-mated had purchased in an impressive five days – not a whole week of gossipy gasps. A cheap illustrated novelization of the whole ordeal, the unexpected, virtuous romance between the two captains included, was already out, devoured by all the strata of London society. Sophia had seen it pushed under embroidered cushions in the parlor, cunningly tucked behind the mirror of dressing tables. 

He knew she wasn't talking about it at all. 

"You more than anyone else would know the answer I must give to this question, Miss Cracroft,” he said. "it is not easy, definitely not. We are - we aren’t simple men to deal with; neither of us is. But I…" 

She prompted him: heart beating in her throat. "But?" 

"But I hope, ma'am; I hope about all kinds of things. It's one of my most many talents, to be able hope in things I shouldn't dream of."

An inside joke, that one: she could tell by the glint in his eyes, even if she wasn't the one it was meant for. But his words fascinated her: so unusual for a man, and a man of this age. _Hope._

Sophia rapped a quick tattoo against the windowsill.

"What do you hope for, then, Captain Fitzjames?" 

"I hope for happiness,” James Fitzjames said, “mine and his, and for learning the ways of each other; I hope for long years to spend together and for a gentle strolling towards old age, hand in hand. I hope for good seas, if he ever wants to go back to that life, as I do not forget it is in his blood; and when he is back, I hope for dogs to spoil rotten and sit with in front of the fireplace, and Christmas parties with our friends. I hope for books about our story, good books, and for prizes and awards, and a knighthood for Francis if not for me, and recognition – the overdone, trite, overblown public kind he says he hates and he is in sore need of."

Sophia had heard somewhere what a fine storyteller Captain Fitzjames was. They were right; she could almost smell the cloves and cinnamon of those future Christmases of his. 

"It is an ambitious dream," she said. 

"It is." Fitzjames smiled another joke, but this time included her in it. "A mad one too,no doubt – though I do know you are too courteous to point it out yourself. But hope is _mad_ , at times; it reminds us of whenwe were children, and of being but children in a world we are barely beginning to understand." He looked down, at his long, gloved hands; the right index finger slightly stiffer than the others, where cunning stuffing took the place of the finger he had lost to scurvy. "I am aware that not all of this may come to be; not even an infinitesimal part of it is by any means owed. But suffice to say, I have learned the value of that particular madness." 

"Of hope." 

"Yes," Captain Fitzjames said. "Of hope."

Sophia said nothing. It came to her, then, that maybe all her objections, all her reasonable reservations about Francis's station and hers and the unknowns of marrying a middle-bred Navy captain, were less solid than she had thought, and less real; and that the one true reason she refused his proposal was fear. The fear of loving him like James Fitzjames did; the fear of risking so much all at once. 

The fear of hope: yes, that too. 

"I – I think I regret this most of all," she said before realizing it. "Not having that courage in me; not being reckless, in the one thing it's probably wise to be reckless in. Enough to dare –" 

She came up short of ways to put it, of ways she wouldn't regret later. _Dare to be where you are; dare to_ be _you._

"Yes,” said Captain Fitzjames, saving her again. "Yes; it is indeed a great adventure." 

"Not an easy one."

"Not a hard one, either." Fitzjames pressed his lips together, looking suddenly piercingly young – younger than Francis, than Sophia herself. He moved closer in one seamless motion. She fought not to recoil. She wanted to hear what he had to say. 

"I promise you, Miss Cracroft," he said, "that I will do anything within my power and beyond to be worthy of such an adventure."

She let out a sound. It was not a sob.

"I know you will," she said, "that was never the matter. _Will_ never be the matter."

Fitzjames smiled. When he took her hand she let him bring it to his lips, graze her knuckles with the faintest of kisses. 

The pressure made the skin around the splinter smart. 

It was over. Captain Fitzjames’s eyes kept returning to the door – his whole body curving under the gravity of Francis Crozier. The ribbon tying all three of them together was coming loose. As it was supposed to. 

"You are a rare woman, Miss Cracroft," Captain Fitzjames said. "And do know – please forgive me for being so bold – do know that the doors of our house will always be open to you. I know Francis feels the same."

Sophia rolled the words on her tongue like a sugar pill; felt it melt into images of the home they must be putting together, in some good, respectable neighborhood just off the center, like Sir James Ross's adorable house. Freshly-painted banisters, the kitchens smelling of lemon soap; Francis's spare belongings finally nestled comfortably among those of another. She swallowed, past the sugar, the bile. 

"Of course," she managed to say. "Thank you, Captain Fitzjames."

He nodded graciously; let go of her hand. 

"I wish you all the happiness allotted to mortal beings, too," he said. "And I feel confident you will find it."

"Do not say things you don’t think, Captain Fitzjames."

"But I can hope for them, right?" 

Sophia was startled into a chuckle. This man delighted into ambushing you into having fun. "You can hope, of course."

"Then I bid you a good night, Miss Cracroft." Captain Fitzjames (James; she did think he could become a James in time) moved back, towards the door. "I do think I deserve one waltz in the evening after all – owe it to the good souls of London and their appetite for mild scandal, and to my own amusement."

Sophia arched an eyebrow. "Does he still pretend not to know how to dance?" 

"Oh, yes – with ferocious zeal, too."

"Let's not keep you from inflicting some tender torture, then. Good night, Captain Fitzjames." Sophia said. There was so much more she wanted to say; so much she wanted to ask him – little things, things piercing her heart. If Francis’s spelling was still as atrocious as that of his last letters to her, and if he still harbored his irrational distrust of trains, and if he had finally lost that hideous patterned vest which had been out of fashion for a good decade. If he really believed one day she would be happy, as happy as he and Francis were, because right now her happiness seemed to have a hole in it, and one that had the shape of but one man in the entire universe. 

She wanted to ask him all of it, and knew he would answer, as truthfully as he could; but she wouldn't. It was time to say good-bye; it was time for him to go back to his partner and wrestle him into a dance he would secretly enjoy the whole time.

"Good night," she said again, and that was it. 

(It was the right thing to do; and Sophia could endure being miserable, but not being unfair. Not again.)

"Would you like for me to escort you back?" 

She shook her head. "No, no, thank you; I think I'll wallow in my solitude a little longer, if that is all right with you." 

"Of course; I'm a newly tolerant man, after all." He opened the door, threw a last half-bow in her direction, and slipped out, the soft click-click of his polished boots melting into the darkness of the hallway. Noise and heat rushed in through the crack; his buttons glinting goldly the last thing she saw of him. 

Sophia took a couple of deep breaths, until she felt steady on her feet; carefully worked the splinter out of her flesh. The door was still imperfectly closed. She walked to it, pressing one hand against it, her ear close to the crack. She fancied she could hear Captain Fitzjames's steps still, leaving the hallway, crossing onto the pale marble of the ballroom; the rustle of fabric against fabric as he came up behind Francis and gently cupped elbow. She even heard Francis's whispered, _'James'_ , chiming like a bell at the center of her chest. A tug there, too: the release of a ribbon falling to her feet. 

Then it was just her: Miss Cracroft, Sophia, all in one, standing in invisible snow. She wondered how long she would live like this: moving in a world forever caked in snow, always angry and hungry. She remembered how long _they_ had lived in such a world: three years, nearly four. She decided she could endure it. 

She could brave one more winter. They deserved this spring. Sophia pressed her lips to the door, briefly, imagining it was flesh and bone, and pockmarked skin smelling cleanly under her mouth, and for it to still be hers, just for a moment. 

_Be happy, Francis,_ she mouthed against it. _Do hope._

  


(There was a dampness in her eyes. She didn't think of tears, but of thawing fields.) 

  
  



End file.
